The World Bank is facing growing pressure to block Brazilian attempts to hand one of Jair Bolsonaro’s most notorious allies a plum £210,000-a-year job at its headquarters in Washington.
Abraham Weintraub, who until last week was the Brazilian president’s hard-right education minister, flew to the US, possibly using a diplomatic passport to skirt a Covid-19 ban on travellers from Brazil.
“I’m leaving Brazil as quickly as possible,” Weintraub, whose detractors suspected he left the South American country for fear of arrest, announced on Twitter.
According to Brazilian reports the 48-year-old economist, who critics call “the worst minister in Brazilian history”, is the subject of multiple investigations, including for alleged racism and the online dissemination of fake news.
In April Weintraub was filmed labelling supreme court judges “punks” who needed jailing, remarks some believe could configure a crime against national security.
Weintraub’s dismissal was announced last Thursday as Brazil’s political crisis – which has seen Bolsonaro’s ratings fall amid a soaring coronavirus death toll, a series of scandals involving his supporters and sons, and the resignation of a key minister – deepened with the arrest of one of his longstanding associates.
The World Bank subsequently confirmed the ex-minister had been put forward for a job as a senior executive there.
But growing outrage in Brazil and at the bank could jeopardise that. World Bank employees this week petitioned its ethics committee, saying staff were “profoundly disturbed” by the choice. The association said the kind of behaviour Weintraub was accused of was “totally unacceptable”, citing his racist and derogatory remarks about Chinese and indigenous people.
In a separate letter, Brazilian opinion-makers appealed to the bank and the governments of the eight countries who must approve Weintraub’s appointment, saying he lacked the “basic ethical, professional and moral qualifications” for the job.
Thiago Amparo, a law professor and one of the signatories, urged bank directors to oppose Weintraub’s “disastrous” nomination – a “sweet deal” he suspected was designed to help the former minister avoid investigators.
“It’s not that he isn’t the best person for the job – he’s not even a mediocre person for the job. He’s just not up to the job at all,” said Amparo, from the Getulio Vargas foundation in São Paulo.
During Weintraub’s 14 months in government he became notorious for his provocative social media videos and atrocious spelling, as well as what foes called his ideologically charged attacks on education.
He boasts significant support from the far right, including Bolsonaro’s politician sons, and more than 900,000 Twitter followers, but is also widely loathed. In a recent interview the author Ignácio de Loyola Brandão called him “an educationless education minister, vulgar, horrendous, sickening”.
“He is completely the opposite of what the World Bank stands for in terms of multilateralism and diplomatic respect,” said Amparo. “During his time at the education ministry he didn’t manage to accomplish anything … This is not what the World Bank needs.”
Reuters said the chair of the World Bank ethics committee, Guenther Schoenleitner, had told employees it would not tolerate racist remarks but could not influence Brazil’s choice.
Weintraub has yet to comment, instead posting a series of Twitter photographs in which he poses at fast food restaurants in his new home.